The Girl in the Mirror
by Scout Girl
Summary: Daughter of Mine was locked in a mirror, she is the movement you see when your eyes are half closed, she's the smudge of pink under the surface and the flash of red by the door. This is the story of someone who looks into the secret world of the mirror...


Title: The Girl in the Mirror

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Well it's not mine

Dedication: For Kit :-)

BETA: Hellenebright on livejournal

A/N: This was written for the DW Minor Characters ficaton, the prompt I got was _Request 3: A child is haunted by 'daughter of mine' in their mirror._ I hope you all like it… it scares people this story does

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**_The Girl in the Mirror_**

Louise Frank woke up on a day on a day that would change her life. In fact this very day would haunt her for so many years to come that she would never completely overcome the fear it had installed in her, and it was all because she cleaned her teeth that morning. Normally she didn't bother, but this morning her mouth felt dirty and when she ran her tongue along her teeth she shuddered. So half asleep she dragged herself along to the bathroom and sleepily reached out for her red toothbrush and her toothpaste. When she groggily looked up and saw the hint of redness in the mirror, she just thought it was her toothbrush and carried on cleaning her teeth. She only looked up when she had her hands cupped and full of water to splash on her face to wake her up. She didn't need it though. When she looked up she didn't only see her small frame with bottle green eyes, messy blonde hair and fading purple pyjamas, but also another figure. Just the slightest hint of a figure, but still a figure, with a pale pink coat and a cream scarf, holding a red balloon.

Louise's toothbrush fell to the floor as she stared at the girl in the mirror with horrified fascination. There was someone there, they had to be standing just in front of the door, but when Louise turned around and looked at the pale blue door there was no-one behind it. So she spun back to the mirror. The girl was still there.

Louise ran. Out of the bathroom and into her bedroom. This had to be a nightmare; it just wasn't possible for someone to be in a mirror and not in existence. She was scared by the idea of some who was only seen in a mirror because whatever her father had told her mirrors had always had a slightly scary edge to them and this had just heightened it, a girl actually inside the mirror. Louise sat on her bed with her arms wrapped around her knees, looking around nervously. She didn't have a mirror in her room and she was glad of it. Keeping one hand around her legs, she rummaged under her pillow with the other, bringing out her well worn copy of North Child to lose herself in for half an hour.

By the time she had finished chapter 23, she felt a lot calmer, and she whistled as she got dressed. She found a simple white shirt and pale pink skirt, but after remembering the girl's little pink coat she changed her mind and put on her worn pair of jeans and her slippers. She slipped on her watch and skipped downstairs, purposely avoiding looking in the bathroom.

By nine thirty that evening Louise had almost forgotten about the girl in her bathroom mirror. She hadn't told anyone because she found she had no one to tell: her mother had died when she was only a toddler and her father was out of the country with work. That only left her brother Richard, and he was the last person that Louise would turn to. The two of them where total opposites, he was lean where she was lanky he had smooth perfectly tanned skin while hers was freckled and paper white, where he had perfect black hair she had dull and normally messy blonde. He was handsome while she was plain and he was seventeen to her ten years.

Louise tactically avoided cleaning her teeth that night, and was in bed and asleep in the space of three quarters of an hour, but her dreams where not peaceful.

She was standing in a field, staring up at the blue sky above; she lay down in the grasses and reached up as if she was trying to catch the clouds in her hands. After a while she gave up and just traced the outlines with her finger tips. Suddenly there was a flash of red in the corner of her eye and she turned towards it. It was a balloon released into the sky. Louise smiled and followed it up with her eyes and then another balloon to her right flew up into the sky, and another, and another, and another until the sky was blood red with balloons, until it looked like the sky would burst with balloons. And then suddenly a fork of lightning fell from the sky striking balloons and causing the dead rubber skins to fall gently on top of her. This happened again and again until she was almost totally covered in them only her mouth and eyes were clear, and still more fell down until he eyes where covered, and then finally the red rubber fell on her mouth and she was buried. Then as she struggled to get up, the rubber seemed to melt together, turning it into a huge latex blanket that covered the length and breadth of her field. As she reached up, trying to rip it off her, a heaviness fell upon her prison and it was getting harder and harder to breathe…

She woke up with a cry. There was still something over her face and she clawed it away fearfully. It was her duvet. She breathed a sigh of relief and sat up, resting her head on her hands. She checked her watch, which she had forgotten to take off yesterday, and saw that it was twenty to eight. She slipped out of bed and got dressed without bothering to open her curtains or turn on her light, so she couldn't see what she had put on. It felt like her high neck jumper and her corded trousers, but she wasn't sure.

She shuddered, suddenly thinking of her dream, and she knew that her dream was because of the figure with the balloon she had thought she had seen in the mirror. She quickly raced over to the light switch and turned it on. She looked down, she was wearing her roll neck jumper and cords and she tentatively sat back down on her bed. She was having a real problem with the girl in the mirror, her senses told her that the girl was real and yet she couldn't be real.

She knew that she had to prove to herself that the girl wasn't real and was just part of her imagination. So with great trepidation Louise got up and headed towards the bathroom. She walked in with her eyes closed but when she knew that she was directly in front of the mirror she opened them.

There was no one in the mirror but herself, with her dirty blonde hair looking like a birds nest, a blue roll neck jumper and pale cream cords. She smiled at herself and her reflection smiled right back with green eyes twinkling. Louise was so relieved that she laughed at the state of her hair and whistled a couple of notes as she turned away from the mirror, reaching to grab her hair brush.

She looked back and started to brush her hair, using the mirror to check how it looked. And they then she saw it again, a flash of pink by the door in the mirror. Automatically she spun around and saw that there was nothing there, and then she slowly turned to face the mirror. Again there was nothing there but this time, taking nothing for granted Louise looked carefully at the mirror, searching for evidence that she again had imagined the girl in the pale pink coat. Just as she started to relax again she saw the hint of red poking out of the door frame and a small hand clutching a piece of string. Louise knew that if she turned around, the girl with the ruby red balloon wouldn't be there. She was the child of the mirror.

From then on every mirror that she looked in contained evidence of the girl in the mirror: either the string of her balloon, the end of her cream scarf flitting into view or even the girl's face half hidden behind an object, her light blue eyes staring so menacing at Louise.

For a week Louise lived, too scared to take any action against the girl with a pale pink coat, too scared to check in any mirror because wherever she looked there was the girl. Just like that she had let fear take over what had been a peaceful life.

Richard hadn't noticed. He looked after her and cared for her but didn't care about her and certainly hadn't taken any notice of how twitchy and jumpy his kid sister had become over the course of a week. He just carried on doing what he was told, looking after his sister.

Exactly one week after it had all started, Louise walked, shaking uncontrollably, into the bathroom. She realised that the mirror girl wouldn't leave her, so she knew that she would have to learn to deal with her. It still didn't stop her shivering with fear though.

After a long moment standing right outside the bathroom Louise stepped in and literally quaking inn her slippers she surveyed the mirror.

The girl was standing behind the half open door so Louise could only see half of her body, half of her sharp little face, half of the pale pink coat, half of her scarf, only one of her legs and only one arm, the same arm with the red balloon encased in the hand. Louise shivered unintentionally and the girl in the mirror cocked her head to one side, directing all her focus on Louise.

Louise could now see both of the girl's cold blue eyes and her pointed chin. The girl could have been pretty had she not been glaring in such a way it looked like she wanted revenge for being trapped in this mirror. Then the girl smiled and Louise couldn't take it anymore, she reached forward with the first thing she grabbed hold of, which was her own wooden hair brush, she threw it at the mirror with all her might.

And the mirror shattered.

Louise jumped back from the shattered pieces of mirror as they cascaded down to the floor. Very carefully she stepped forward, avoiding the little bits that scattered all over the floor, and knelt very carefully by the largest shard of broken mirror.

She picked it up and held it up to her face. Looking in, instead of seeing her own bottle green eyes and messy blonde hair, she saw cold blue eyes and tidy brown hair swept up off the girl's face. Louise held the gaze of the mirror girl for as long as she could. Just when it seemed that Louise would be the one to break the gaze first, the girl turned around and started to walk away with her back to Louise. Then she turned around to face Louise again waving with the hand that wasn't holding the balloon; and then the girl from the mirror turned and walked away out of the mirror.

Louise dropped the piece of mirror she was holding and it smashed on the tiled floor of the bathroom with a crash.

And Louise never saw the girl from the mirror again.

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Scout Girl 


End file.
